(640) What I believe about me

The afternoon and evening on the day of the session were very rough. I spent most of the remainder of the day in bed.

Yet, despite feeling so badly that day, I noticed I kept telling myself that “this too shall pass.” I noticed that I had some hope – (dare I say I had significant hope?) – that I would feel better the next day (or maybe the day after that).

Compare that to the days that a rough session would cause me to pray for death because I was so sure I would never feel better.

That’s a huge shift for me.

Anyway . . .

The day after the therapy session, I had a VERY busy day. And the next day was very busy. And the next day was the same . . . and today was very busy until mid-afternoon. About 2:00pm this afternoon, I was able to come home, put my pajamas on and flop down on my bed to mindlessly watch some TV.

Photo by Martin Chen

I’ve been pushing away the emotions from the session by staying so busy. Once I stopped being busy, the emotions flooded over me – they hit me incredibly hard. I was overwhelmed by the emotions and I jumped deep into my numbing behaviors. I cried, I slept, I cried, I picked all the scabs off my face, I slept, I masturbated to violent porn, I slept . . .

Finally, at 9:30pm tonight, I got motivated enough to take a shower. During the shower, my self-talk was very destructive. I’m back in that hopeless place again.

I cannot find one ounce of hope that things will be better tomorrow. I am once again entertaining the idea it would be better to die. I don’t really want to die, but I have no desire to keep struggling to live.

I’ll never be healthy enough to function within an intimate relationship – not only does no one want to deal with my lack of self care (I’m frumpy) and my depression (I’m a killjoy), but I don’t have the energy to exert the effort required to function within an intimate relationship. I barely have enough energy to get out of bed; there is no way I’ll ever have the energy to do more than that – to be a good intimate partner.

I don’t think I’ve ever feel better – or if I ever do manage to feel better, it will only be a little better and it won’t be enough to allow me to really function and really thrive.

In order to be loveable at some point in the future, I have to have been healthy and whole once before – and that would prove that my brokenness is only a temporary injury that will heal in time. If I’ve never been whole, then there is no way for me to return to that wholeness. If I’ve always been broken, then I’m not capable of moving beyond that brokenness. I’ll never be loveable and “good enough.”

Maybe I can count my time of wholeness during childhood . . . would that be enough wholeness? Or, does my state of wholeness have to have occurred during adulthood . . . ?? If I’ve never been whole as an adult, will people judge me as not worthy of their love – a lost cause?

——-

(midnight)

Lying in bed, trying to go to sleep (I’m not sleepy because I slept all afternoon), I had a little shift in my thinking . . .

Being in pain does not cause me to be bad and broken. Rather, all it means is that I’m a good person who is in pain because she has a bad injury. If I had a badly broken bone, I would still be classified as loveable . . . and it wouldn’t matter how healthy or unhealthy my bones had been beforehand – it would still be a case of a badly broken bone that needs attention – and I would still be a person that deserves thoughtful and loving care.

And . . . who do I think will be doing the judging? I’m sure that lots of people will be doing the judging . . . but, they aren’t people whose opinions I care about. So, stink on them. If that is how they see me, then I don’t want to have anything to do with them.

It’s up to me to declare myself lovable and deserving of the time and space to heal – no one else can do that for me. It’s up to me to decide that I’m loveable even when I’m still in the process of healing . . . even before I’m done healing.

Definitely. For me, it’s first learning to intercept (or at least notice) the automatic jump to “I am bad.” It’s still so (seemingly) unconscious for me. But even if I catch those thoughts every great once in a while, it’s a small step forward.

The challenge for me is that, even when I am aware that I’m making the leap to “I am bad”, I so deeply believe it that it feels impossible to cause myself to believe something different. There are times when causing myself to believe something different is easier than other times, so I try to make the most of those times and bask in the possibility I feel in those times.

About the post dates

For each post, there is a significant lag in time between the date the journal entry was written (shown in the heading of the post) and the date the post was published to the blog.

The time lag allows me the opportunity to alter names and other identifying data for privacy purposes, check for grammar and spelling errors, break longer passages into smaller parts, and add the tags, categories, photos, quotes and url links.

It also provides a buffer against the natural “ebb and flow” in the volume of therapeutic writing I produce. After all, I do have a life outside of therapy, LOL.

In fact, there will likely be times when I don't publish anything for weeks . . . that would be because I am preoccupied with events currently occurring in my life. Of course, participating fully in my current life takes precedence over documenting my history.

However, it is my intention to continue documenting my journey even though I may run significantly behind in publishing those journal entries to my blog. I'll publish entries when I can!

On a side note, I write a lot about other people. Please know that I almost always change names, and I often change other characteristics such as gender and age in order to protect the privacy of those people.

Thank you so much for stopping by to check out my blog!

- Marie---------

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